Dyspraxia and Asperger's

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Indeed. I have often wondered wether I don't have asd at all. Just Dyspraxia. I do have obsesive interests and repeditive behaviorus how ever. I have read that Dyspraxic people are prone to obsessive behaviour.

I can't catch balls, either. Not even basketballs. I type very fast, too. But handwriting gives me handaches, takes me forever, and is barely legible.

I was diagnosed with Dyspraxia, and 3 proffessional phychologists have all told me that Dyspraxia is an Autustic spectrum disorder, or in metorthorical words, ''under the umbrella''.

I find this interesting can you expand on this? Why do they say Dyspraxia is a Autistic disorder did they explain why? Just about everywhere I have read many consider Dyspraxia to not be a Autistic disorder. Yet many who are diagnosed with the disorder often have Aspergers Syndrome or Autism. A lot of what I have read about Dyspraxia it seems like people who have it (and I speak from experience of someone who diagnosed with it) often have Autistic traits. It does seem Dyspraxia and Aspergers often ovelap each other. Also people with Dyspraxia, Aspergers and Autism often feel "out of sync" with other people and their enviroment.

It's quite controversial but clearly there does seem to be some kind a link with these disorders.

According to some specialists, repetitive/obsessive behaviours, even rituals are not unheard of among dyspraxic people. However, it may just be caused by a lack of proper diagnosis when one has already been given one.

I am dyspraxic too and I do display a lot of AS characteristics. I have even talked to a dyspraxic aspie once who only seemed to have mild dyspraxia (But that's probably because he has great coping skills.) and he told me that I seemed more autistic and dyspraxic than him though we are not the same kind of dyspraxic.

There is a thread about dyspraxia in the "other conditions" forum.

As I said before, I have two dyspraxic uncles, one of them who only display some characteristic but was diagnosed with it because his daughter has dyslexica and ADHD, the other was "severely" dyspraxic but now he's fine and has been helped when he was a child.

He is hypersensitive to some sounds just like me but have no other sensory issue. He used to have some autistic characteristic though not all of them and no he seems pretty normal. But some people have great coping skills.
He used to stim when he was a child and had social difficulties, which is one of the reasons why he was helped (or else they would probably not have cared about his dyspraxia) and a special interets but it's common in my family, especially among males.

However, no routines, etc, but even among Autistic people there are differences.

But really, I have he's the only dyspraxic person in my family (apart from me) who displayed some autistic characteristics but it would be great to make a survey among dyspraxic people (with and without a comorbid conditon) to see whether Autistic characteristics are really common, if they are linked to severe dyspraxia or present in the milder forms, etc...
It would not tell us for sure that dyspraxia can ressemble Autism because many people can be misdiagnosed but it could be interesting to see how many of us are in this case.

Yes, there are obviously differences between Dyspraxia and Autism, and I don't mean Dyspraxics are Autistic, but it can hold hands with AS. The Autistic spectrum doesn't just involve AS and Autism only - it can involve a range of different disorders. I've even read up about it somewhere in a newspaper, that Aspergers, ADHD and Dyspraxia are all linked to the Autistic traits.

I have Dyspraxia myself, and also Asperger traits.

Last edited by Joe90 on 29 Oct 2010, 5:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

I am in the same boat I have Dyspraxia and Autistic tendencies. To be honest feeling "out of tune" or "out of sync" with the world seemed normal to me but I knew I wasn't the same as most people I just never really understood why. When I heard about Autism and read more into it some years ago I started to realize I had Autistic/Aspergers traits also.

You are right as well about most of these conditions, ADD, ADHD, Dyspraxia and Aspergers Syndrome seem share many of the same traits.

I have two children; a nine yr old girl with Dyspraxia and a nearly four yr old boy with classic NV Autism. My daughter had very poor gross (e.g. couldn't stand on one leg for more than 2 secs) and fine motor skills. Through hammering away at her with loads of physical development (swimming, ballet, etc) since DX at about 5 she is now very well co-ordinated and can do somersaults, cartwheels, catch a ball thrown at her while running etc. The fine motor skills are not bad but not as good as a normal childs still. This contrasts with my Autie who has good fine motor skills which he uses to manipulate things but holds onto us when going up or down steps still. Many children with Dyspraxia have learning difficulties, which my daughter has and many of these also turn out to be gifted which again my daughter (to my surprise and delight) has.
Learning disabled but gifted sounds like an Oxymoron, but my daughter is a classic case, struggled to learn to read, but now has reading comprehension i.e. understanding of the material in the top 5% for age. Is a happy kid but has deeply felt emotions, has impressive ideas, I mean she planned her 9th birthday and did a mind-map in preparation for it, and then organised and ran it and the many activities and the sleepover herself. She loves other kids and gets on very well with them, but can occasionally misjudge a mood a little and may not always read body language that well..

The pediatric team that DX my son produced a picture that showed an AS chart with LFA at the bottom, Aspergers at the top, and the Dys-syndromes (and IIRC ADHD as well) at the top and off to the side to suggest that they are in some as yet unknown way linked to ASD. I have not been able to find this image online so wonder if they made it up themselves to reflect their viewpoint? I know the lead pediatrician considers ASD primarily genetic, with some type of environmental or developmental trigger and what we see in the traits of the person are an 'expression' of those genetics and factors. Anecdotally a majority of his patients parents are engineers and technical people, as my wife and I are.
One day maybe we'll know a lot more about all this. I certainly hope so in my lifetime.

My daughter (7) is diagnosed AS and Dyspraxic (Dev Coord Disorder) so it can be co-morbid. She has pretty severe dysfunction in eye hand coordination, crossing her midline, excessive eye blinks, loses her balance when she closes her eyes, can't tell what you write on her hand if she's not looking at it, can't walk a balance beam, and has very, very poor handwriting. While some of these traits can exist within AS, some of them are beyond the scope of AS and result in the co-morbid diagnosis of dyspraxia. She also has trouble following a line of text while reading as her eyes tend to "jump" around the page. Dyspraxia was described to me by the OT as her mind telling her body to do something and her body not complying accurately.

I don't have dyspraxia.

I have Dyspraxia which I will never outgrow. As a child, I was the only one in the whole class who couldn't swim, even though swimming was my favourite thing in the whole world. I did start to swim at the age of 11, but not properly, nd I still can't swim properly to this day, whilst everyone else I knew all learnt to swim by the age of 8 at the latest.

I'm always getting dizzy, and I can't go on any rides what spin around because I always feel really sick afterwards, and nobody else does (well, some people do, but the people I go on rides with don't). I can't even have any alcohol because even one glass makes me very giddy. I don't get drunk on one drink, but it makes me horribly giddy.

I find it very hard to stop dead. For example, if I'm about to cross a road, then suddenly a car shoots up from nowhere and I have to step back again, I tend to dart forward as I stop, instead of just calmly stepping back like everyone else does. I don't know if it's crossing the road anxiety, or if it's just my poor sense of balance.

And my handwriting is appauling. I wrote stories in a notebook every day for years, but my handwriting still hasn't proved. My spelling is rather good for a Dyspraxic person, but my maths is terrible. I was put in set 5 for maths at school (which is the lowest of the low), and we had to be taught maths at the level of 10 year olds (and we were 15), and I was the only one who still didn't undestand it, so in the end they had to take me out of the class and sit me in the library with a special needs helper so she can just help me one-to-one - and I still didn't understand it. So she had to break it down to the level of a 5 year old, and that's when I finally did get it. Only just though. So I was the worst at maths in my whole yeargroup.

I was never good at sports either. I could never catch a ball or pass a ball. When I did pass the ball it was always in different direction, no matter how hard I tried to aim it at the person I wanted. There are so many things like that I find difficult, and also finding socializing difficult really puts the tin hat on. I must be ret*d.

Bet there is something going on there, like you are a very visual learner or something, and need to 'see' the maths

Dyspraxia affects your social life. Imagine a boy who can not run, catch a ball etc. In some environments it will create social havoc. Bullying starts and... basically destroyed my self-esteem. I made girl friends in school though because they don't put so much emphasis on physical ability. But a boy who has girl friends is going to be bullied sooner or later. I became recluse not because of my social understanding but because of my lack of physical ability to blend in.

Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) has dyspraxia. He can't even tie his own shoes sometimes. It's nice to see a celebrity who is open about a condition like that--they can really help increase awareness. Interestingly, the article in The Daily Mail about it says some things about dyspraxia that disagree with other sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1046031/Harry-Potter-The-brain-disorder-means-I-8217-t-tie-shoelaces.html

The first time I read about Asperger's, I immediately recognized myself in the description. However, when I read about the dyspraxia that often accompanies it, that cemented the diagnosis for me. I have since gotten diagnosed with AS, but have not had a formal dyspraxia diagnosis.

I am sure I would qualify for a dyspraxia diagnosis because I am notoriously clumsy and have always been bad at sports. And, at the age of 44 I still cannot tie my shoes the way most people do.

What Nouse said about the physical part of dyspraxia effecting someone's social life is true, though dyspraxia can also effect social skills in and of itself, though in a different way to AS. We generally have decent (maybe slightly delayed, but not to the extent generally associated with autism) social understanding, but we mix up words and often have speech issues- in my case, I can't pronounce a lot of words; and have a slight stutter. Its also often associated with problems with memory, spacial awareness ans d organisation. We have a hard time figuring out what order things go in or finding our. ofway around places. Or at least, thats my experience as a ~*severe dyspraxic*~. Its a common comorbidity of Aspergers and ADHD.